Holy Water

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I don’t see a holy water spigot obviously available at my church with which parishoners might fill vessels to take home. Since I’d been away from the church for so long, I wonder if maybe taking holy water home is no longer the norm. I don’t want to ask for it if it’s no longer what we are to expect from our churches.
 
There has been no change in stance on holy water. If you don’t see any available, then perhaps ask around and if no parishioners can help you, ask a priest to bless some water for you.
 
In our church, people just take it from the big baptismal font which is huge and always full.
 
I don’t think I have seen a Catholic Church without the availability of holy water for the parishioners to take.
It can be kept in different place, you may just have to ask the priest.
 
I’ve never heard of taking home holy water (fairly new Catholic). Why would someone do this?
 
To sprinkle on things, to put in food, to have as a peace of mind, to drink even, etc.
You can also get blessed salt to put in your food. In fact, one of my relative gets salt blessed every year by her priest around Christmastime to use in food for the whole year.
 
^smh1978–This is a longstanding practice. Quite a few Catholics have a small holy water font in their homes, the most frequent use I’ve seen is to be able to bless oneself with it at various times. I usually make the sign of the cross with holy water before leaving for work in the morning, for example. You might want to check out Church teachings on sacramentals (objects and practices which have the purpose of inspiring increased devotion, such as rosaries, chaplets, holy cards, and holy water.) Just be careful of superstition–it’s holy water, not magic water!

@LovingMass–There’s a holy water reservoir there someplace, and no, the Church’s teaching on its efficacy as a sacramental hasn’t changed. Check near the baptismal font, in the narthex, and if you notice a closet, in there. If you can’t locate it, ask the sacristan, an usher at Mass, or the priest. They would know where it is. And it’s still available without cost. You don’t need a fancy, special bottle to bring it home with, any clean container will do (I use a clean fruit jar.)

One of the goofier things I ever saw where holy water is concerned is the lady who showed up at weekday Mass with three one-gallon milk jugs to take holy water home with her. The sacristan had to tell her to just take a couple of cups, and leave some for other people!
 
Dorothy said:
I don’t think I have seen a Catholic Church without the availability of holy water for the parishioners to take.
It can be kept in different place, you may just have to ask the priest.
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That’s our experience as well. The OP should look more closely in the back of the church or ask an usher.
 
Ask an usher or an altar server. In our parish there is a tank of holy water in the sacristy. I think many churches keep it there.
 
YoungTradCath said:
To sprinkle on things, to put in food, to have as a peace of mind, to drink even, etc.
You can also get blessed salt to put in your food. In fact, one of my relative gets salt blessed every year by her priest around Christmastime to use in food for the whole year.
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I do the blessed salt thing and I had big bottles of purified water blessed so I can consume it, BUT is it a good idea to consume the holy water from church? It’s not sanitary.

There were times when I filled big bottles with holy water from the church; it wasn’t long until they had green stuff floating in there.
 
Joe_Kelley said:
Ask an usher or an altar server. In our parish there is a tank of holy water in the sacristy. I think many churches keep it there.
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Isn’t that a bit of an inconvenience though? Cause if you want some, you have to ask to go into the sacristy. I think people would be more prone to use it if it were some place in the parish that gets lots of foot traffic.

On wikipedia I saw a picture of faucet that distributes holy water outside the church walls. Nice way to get it without hassle and with privacy.

Then again, it might not be sanitary. There are homeless people around my parish and a lot are mentally ill or jerks who’d do gross things to it (one guy came in before Mass and started yelling stuff, needed to be escorted out).

Well, I wish my parish had that.
 
PazzoGrande said:
Isn’t that a bit of an inconvenience though? Cause if you want some, you have to ask to go into the sacristy… .
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Some will ask me to take them into the sacristy, but most just walk in. We have large sacristy and a steady stream of people going through.
 
YoungTradCath said:
To sprinkle on things, to put in food, to have as a peace of mind, to drink even, etc.
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PazzoGrande said:
…BUT is it a good idea to consume the holy water from church? ** It’s not sanitary.**

There were times when I filled big bottles with holy water from the church; it wasn’t long until they had green stuff floating in there.
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Yeah, I would certainly not be drinking any holy water from our church. People can get it from the large open baptismal font at the front of our church. This is the same font countless people dip their fingers into every day, get baptized from, dip containers into to fill, etc. Gross to consume.
 
smh1978 said:
I’ve never heard of taking home holy water (fairly new Catholic). Why would someone do this?
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Welcome!

A priest told me once that there was a lady who would come and drain the Holy Water. She would take buckets of it home. He didn’t see her at first. He only noticed that the Water was gone. One day he saw her come into Church with her bucket and fill it with Holy Water. He approched her and asked what she was doing with so much water every week. She told him she was washing her floors.😃 Needless to say he infomed her that was not a proper use of the Holy Water.

I think someone has already mentioned that it is common to have a Holy Water Font in the home We have three. I only fill the one near the front door and it is hard because it evaporate so quickly. It is for the family to bless themselves as they enter and leave to remind them of their baptism and the love that Jesus has for us. When the children were at home, I would make the sign of the cross on their forheads before they went to sleep. My son has a collection of different fonts. I hope that I have answered your question.
 
For my holy water font at home, here’s what I do to keep the water from going green.

First of all, I only get a smallish bottle of holy water at a time. I use a small clean canning jar (about 8 oz) and bring it home in that.

I put a clean makeup sponge in the bowl of the font and saturate that with some holy water, adding a little more every few days as the sponge begins to dry out. The rest of it is still in the closed canning jar. Every couple of weeks or so, I let the font and sponge dry out and wash the removable plastic bowl in the dishwasher. Since it’s dried out, there is no such thing as a residual blessing in the dry bowl or sponge. I replace the sponge and refill the bowl once it’s cleaned out.

I asked my priest about the practice of consuming holy water, using it to wash everyday items, etc. As far as consuming it or cooking with it, he said what many others have said–it’s not sanitary, and holy or not, you could get sick doing that. And washing everyday items (like the lady who used it to wash her floors) is an inappropriate use of a sacramental. Actually, he laughed pretty hard about that one, but did comment that it borders on the superstitious if she thought that the holy water floor wash would impart any special blessing to her floors.
 
Some cultures appear to regularly drink Holy Water. We urge them to bring some clean water and have the priest bless it. That seems to work out well. At least one of our priests used to bless and drink a cupful whenever he blessed the tank of water in the sacristy.
 
My church has a thing that looks like a large steel drum with a spigot on the front near the bottom to hold the holy water. It’s on a table near the entrance of the church, and it’s cleaned regularly. We have a baptismal font, but it’s a small, ancient marble one on a pedestal with a marble lid that matches the altars and the only time the lid is removed and water is put in it is when baptisms take place.

I do have several bottles full of water from Lourdes (I know this isn’t holy water) that I’ve had for more than a year now, and it’s still clear as crystal, smells fine, tastes (ha) fine.
 
Joe_Kelley said:
Some cultures appear to regularly drink Holy Water. We urge them to bring some clean water and have the priest bless it.
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Yeah Exorcists will have possessed people drink holy water, blessed salt and blessed oil too. They’d do the same; people (I don’t want to call them clients) would buy cases of it to their exorcism sessions and have them blessed, bring them home and consume them.

Outside of that, I’ve only seen one person get drinking water blessed. I wonder why she did that; or better yet, maybe the question should be, why isn’t that done more often?
 
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